


What's in a Name

by WoollyLambda



Series: WoollyLambda's P&P Fics [2]
Category: Barbie - All Media Types, Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper (2004)
Genre: Character Study, Dance Metaphors, Developing Relationship, Embedded Images, Epistolary, Erika (Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper) Character Study, Floriography, Julian (Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper) Character Study, Multi, Multi-media, Music, Names, Past Abuse, Relationship Negotiation, Slow Burn, dominick and anneliese are metamours, dominick and anneliese: your spouse is hot solidarity, language of the flowers, mentions of the sexual harassment of a minor, this fic is mobile-friendly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2020-07-24 17:46:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20018521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WoollyLambda/pseuds/WoollyLambda
Summary: A series of studies on names, their meanings, and how individuals interact with them.1. Erika2. Julian3. Anneliese pt. 1





	1. Erika

_1\. Anglicized spelling of Erica, an Italian name meaning ‘Heather’._

_Rosa centifolia_ , he had studied extensively. Julian knew everything there was to know about the flower. Kingdom: Plantae. Clade: Eudicots, Rosids, Rosales. Family: Rosaceae. Genus: Rosa. It preferred moist, slightly sandy soil. It tolerated heat well. Adding nitrogen to the ground around its roots promoted verdant leaves.

He’d propagated _rosa centifolia_ from seedlings, cuttings…. Julian had once even found a plant, against all odds, growing out of a pinhole in the cover of his mattress. It had taken him by surprise—waking up to that tiny sprout of green against pale, rough-spun white.

_(The evening before had been mild, with the scent of new growth blowing fresh and clean on the air. Anneliese decided that night would be perfect for stargazing. How could he refuse?)_

After he untangled its tender roots from the straw bed-stuffing and slipped it out of the hole, it took to the pot he put it in just as well as any other seedling he’d raised. Caring for _rosa centifolia_ was the easiest thing in the world for Julian. Not even easy. Effortless.

 _Erica Cinerea_ was his newest project. _Ashen heather_ , from the Latin. He’d been growing it in the palace’s greenhouse ever since, well, _Erika_ returned. A bit on-the-nose, Julian realized.

It was a hearty plant with beautiful foliage. It thrived in places other plants lacked the fortitude to even seed in, at altitudes that could easily kill a lesser organism.

A bit on-the-nose _there,_ too.

Heaths—family _Ericaceae—_ were meant to represent solitude. Growing low to the ground, keeping out of sight. Erica had never been one for loneliness. She had—from the first moment Julian saw her—shined in a way that drew others in. She _begged_ to be known by any who encountered her, for better or for worse.

Her heartiness, though. Her ability to thrive where lesser people would have quickly failed.

It didn’t _astonish_ him, so much. Didn’t impress him in the same way it might impress Dominick or Anneliese. The two of them tended to think of poverty as a trial-by-fire. A way to galvanize someone so that they might reach up out of their lesser position for something more fulfilling. And it made sense. They sort of… had to—by virtue of their station—assume that having wealth and means was more for reasons of personal worthiness rather than a product of their great-great-grandparents’ luck.

Julian did his best not to feel insulted by their sentiment, but it did make his skin itch.

All that in mind, he wasn’t sure how to feel about Erika. Not that she was _bad_ , goodness no. If anything, he felt like she was one of the only people who understood him on a fundamental level. Both of them had been raised above their given station and were now ruling over the people they once lived beside. It was… _strange_.

He felt guilty.

To relish their shared suffering—it felt _dirty_ , almost.

To feel kinship with her over skin stretched taught on bones—lips turned blue with thirst and hunger and sickness.

Anneliese, though he loved her, would never know that feeling of emptiness inside. Dominick, though the king tried to understand, would never fully comprehend his new queen’s terror at the first signs of drought.

They had _both_ thrived in inhospitable conditions, the two of them.

And now they had the resources to make changes that could eliminate those conditions.

It truly was strange, having so many lives to think about. So many people depending on them.

_Cinerea._

When he’d first heard the word in his lessons as a boy, Julian tried to break it up into its component parts, not realizing that it was, in fact, its own complete word.

Saying it aloud, it immediately brought to mind stories of Rhea—Titan mother of the Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, and the goddesses Hera, Demeter, and Hestia. Referred to by some texts as the ‘Queen of Heaven’.

 _Erica cinerea._ Erika, Queen of Heaven.

Dominick had liked the thought when Julian told him, at least.

_2\. Feminine form of Erik. Scandinavian origin, meaning ‘eternal ruler’._

_Dulcinea_.

‘ _Sweetheart_ ’ in the informal dialect. A pet name given to daughters by their mothers, husbands by their wives, and especially by clerks to their particularly impolite clients.

‘ _Land of Plenty_ ’ on their coat of arms, for the valley had given them more than their fair share over the years.

‘ _A herd of overly-decadent swine_ ’ to the kingdom’s enemies, though they had very few.

Key exports were agricultural, and included sugarcane, honey, and corn. The populace was healthy and happy with his rule, or so he hoped, and artisans thrived with the knowledge that they would never go hungry in the pursuit of beauty. Farmers and labourers were valued, as were cobblers, architects, and all others who made the more mundane aspects of life less-so. Taxes were readily paid by their wealthiest citizens, for the wealthy knew that anything they lost would be gained by their children, and their children’s children into eternity.

It had not always been such a pristine operation as this. There had, in the kingdom’s past, been war and strife and hardship. Kings who were not as sympathetic to the woes of their subjects as his forefathers had been. There had been bloodshed, long, long before Dominick was born. A civil war waged by the poorest of their people against the richest. The fighting had not lasted long, but the consequences of the neglect that caused it had been drilled into him from an early age.

 _“The cogs of this machine,”_ his father would tell him, _“were not oiled by the good-will of kings alone.”_

Dominick knew Dulcinea as ‘ _home_ ’. He understood, though, why Erika might be reluctant to do the same.

In Anneliese’s kingdom, Arborea, there had been manipulation. Manipulation of Queen Genevieve by a vile man who took advantage of her grief. Manipulation of very ground upon which the city stood by that same, evil man. His greed had been destabilizing them for decades.

Arborea was thriving, thank goodness. Jewelers and geologists alike were flocking to the city to catch even a passing glimpse of the beautiful geodes they were pulling out of the ground. The issue was that Erika had never learned what it meant to be at peace. Hers had been, after all, a war fought in the trenches of famine, of avarice, and of plague.

Her fears put her at odds with her advisors in the worst ways. These were men and women who had been raised in a place that truly, before all else, valued the people over any material gains. Where they suggested that she move lightly, with good faith in her heart, she railed against them. When their advice was to expend, her decree was to conserve. She had visited the palace’s coffers, had helped the royal bankers keep their ledgers clear, and she still feared imbalance.

Dominick hoped that, someday soon, he might be able to ease her fears. He hoped that, just as she had seen the best in him, she would see the best in his country. _Their_ country. In the meantime, he could only work to try and make her more comfortable.

Her greatest strength as a ruler was her ability to interact with the common people. In her time as a troubadour she had learned all of the traditional songs, dances, and tales of Arborea, and as it turned out, she was a quick study in those coming from her new kingdom, too. It took her only a few weeks to memorize the songs he’d been taught as a child, and only a few days more to fully grasp ones he’d never had the patience to learn.

At harvests, she understood more of what the farmers were saying than Dominick did. He—much to the chagrin of his tutors—had never been able to keep up with the lower dialects, and in allowing them to slip away from him, he had become out-of-touch with his subjects. It was strange, in a pleasant way, to have Erika translate for him. To have her tutor him in the language that he _should_ have been fluent in. Dominick was grateful every day for her patience with him, and for her presence at his side. It kept him so blissfully, _wonderfully_ grounded to have a partner like her.

3\. _Germanic name meaning ‘noble’._

Anneliese hadn’t wanted to admit to them at first.

Her… _feelings_.

It was strange, wasn’t it? Narcissistic?

To find someone so similar to her so beautiful?

It was all anyone ever talked about: ‘Twin Queens’ this, and ‘Illegitimate Heir’ that. Talk of the two of them in _both_ kingdoms ran the gamut from rude gossip to truly libelous offences, if what Erika told her was true.

She wasn’t going to pretend that they didn’t look uncannily similar. The fact that Erika had pulled off her ruse for as long as she did, and that Anneliese’s own _mother_ couldn’t tell the difference between them until that very last moment, said enough to that end.

But they were also so spectacularly different.

Everything Anneliese loved about Erika, she loved because it was something that made her unique.

The light, dusty freckles that ran from the edge of her hairline to the tops of her toes—those were something Anneliese would _never_ have. Whenever _she_ went out in the sun, instead of freckling, her skin had the unfortunate propensity to turn bright red. To avoid this, from the moment she grew out of bonnets, she’d always had a hat or a hood on outdoors to shield her face from the sun. All through her childhood, she’d been forced to avoid too much light, lest she burn to the point of bubbling. It had gotten less intense as she aged, but she still lamented the fact that she was so sickly pale. Erika, on the other hand, relished sunlight, especially now that she had the liberty to spend her time as she pleased. She had been forced to cover her freckles up with powder while she was pretending to be Anneliese, and it had been such a gift when she’d taken off the makeup and Anneliese could see her face again.

Her hair, oak brown and soft as silk. Anneliese could braid it for hours and still not have enough.

Her eyes, touched by just the slightest hint of green. Emerald inclusions trapped within the most stunning sapphires. You would only be able to see it if you got close enough, and even then, it would need to be in the right light, with Erika standing stock-still. In recent weeks, Anneliese had only seen the green a handful of times, but she cherished it each moment she did.

She was strong, too—both in body and in mind. She could be sparring wits with Julian in one moment, and in the next, be clashing sabres with Dominick.

And she seemed to be as big a fan of Julian as Anneliese was, which eased her fear that the two of them wouldn’t get along. In fact, she thought they got along _swimmingly._

Not to, uhm, get ahead of herself.

Anneliese loved Julian, of course. She had loved Julian since she was a child. The thought of loving anyone but Julian hadn’t ever even crossed her mind, until she met Erika.

And loving both of them at once? It was tricky. She wasn’t ashamed of her feelings for Erika, no, and she didn’t feel as though she was snubbing Julian by admitting to them. After all, they did… get along.

But the logistics of it. What if they didn’t _get along_ as well as she thought they did?

What if Erika didn’t see her the same way?

She knew she could get her answers easily enough, by just talking to the two of them, but that would mean admitting to all of it _out loud._

And what about Dominick? Erika was _married_ now, and she liked Dominick well enough, but _she_ was almost married to him. What if, somewhere in the deepest, darkest part of his heart, he resented her for loving his _wife_?

No, she couldn’t admit this. The right thing to do was to admire Erika from the relationship they had already built, and not stew on the what-could-bes.

Right.

Not to stew.

It’d be easy.

Not stewing.

Easy as pie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you AGAIN to [fiddles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiddles) my sweet son and [sapphfics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphfics/pseuds/sapphfics) for betaing and just being great!!!!
> 
> [La_Temperanza's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/La_Temperanza) guides for formatting images are SO useful, please go give them lots of love and also for the love of God make your fics mobile-friendly if they have images


	2. Julian

_1\. From the Greek, ioulos. Downy-bearded/youthful._

Duty before indulgence.

Queen Genevieve had never said it out loud, but Anneliese knew it was her family’s truest maxim.

It had weighed on her all her life—the burden of not just living for herself, but for the tens of thousands of subjects who relied on her rule to maintain their livelihoods. If Anneliese didn’t entertain her suitors _just-so_ , there was a chance their fathers wouldn’t renew trade agreements with Arborea. Laughing at old men’s terrible jokes was never meant to be such a high-stakes operation, and yet there she was every time: squirming in her seat as she nodded along with a man four times her age while his son—or sons, God forbid there was ever more than one of them at the table—sat and smirked at her.

There were kind sons, obviously. Young men whose eyes didn’t have teeth. But for every demure, understanding prince, there was one who hadn’t taken his etiquette lessons to heart. Who had never been told ‘no’. Had never learned that devouring women with their gazes was frowned upon in polite company.

Julian could always tell when she’d been chewed on.

Knew exactly how to tend the wounds of teeth dug deep into flesh.

He would sit with her for hours while she told him about whichever gentleman spoke ‘frankly’ with her. ‘Frank’, so it seemed, was code for ‘I am now going to directly transmit to you the thoughts of mine that would have been better left unsaid, and hope that you take the vitriol I spew as a compliment’. It was never a compliment.

There had been one particularly vulpine young man in her youth. A prince from some far-off place so north his skin looked see-through, and his hair wasn’t much darker. He’d asked her to call him Jaska, and though she’d forgotten his true name, his face was something she would never forget—all sharp angles of nose and jaw and cheekbone, and eyes that were sharper still. He took it upon himself to find her at every royal function she attended and corner her. He insisted on taking up as much of her time as would seem proper, and he insisted on spending the time he took whispering about all of the things he would give her, if only she would marry him.

_All_ of the things he would give her.

She had never been a naïve child. Even at thirteen, she understood the impropriety of an heir almost twice her senior saying those sorts of things. Who could she have told, though? Her mother? Surely not. Not her father, either—sick in bed and allowed only to be reminded of the kinder things in life.

No. She didn’t tell anybody about how, when they danced, he would pull her close and murmur into her ear the sorts of things that would make a scarlet woman’s cheeks bleed.

How other girls at court were _jealous_ that she had his favour.

She was _lucky_ , they had all said, to be pursued by one so handsome.

They hadn’t seen his soul, though.

Hadn’t felt his _teeth._

Eventually he got tired of her. Anneliese was so relieved that he was gone from her life that, for a moment, for a single flash of time, she forgot that he was persistent. That he would surely find some other girl with less fortitude than her. The thought of him targeting someone else got him quietly blacklisted from any events at which she would be in attendance, and she hadn’t heard from him even once in the years since.

She’d cried into Julian’s arms after telling him. Had wept against his shoulder as he soothed her and reminded her to breathe.

Julian. Her escape, her rock. Whichever pretty epithets she could bestow would never be enough to fully encompass what he meant to her. Even husband seemed too far removed from the true extent of his blessing upon her life.

She met him soon after her last meeting with Jaska.

( _A full decade now of knowing him. Loving him.)_

Her father brought him to the palace to tutor her in sums after she failed so spectacularly in her lessons that her original tutor quit and fled the country.

( _No one thought to question why she was struggling, at the time._ )

He was only a few months older than her, and yet, under his tutelage she made greater strides than she ever had with the first tutor. With Julian, she thrived.

Those first few years, she hadn’t known much about his past, just that he had been picked from a group of boys from the orphanage.

She hadn’t known that his parents passed from the same plague that her father would eventually succumb to. Hadn’t known that he’d had a sister.

He had a _sister_ , before. Named Phoebe.

Anneliese had wept for the loss of his sister when Julian first told her, and then again after they were married. _She_ had lost a sister, and though she had never known more of her than the shadows that lurked in Julian’s tears, she had known her in his smile, too. How he spoke of one so young being so bright, so beautifully bright and bold and brash. How he spoke of his parent’s delight when they discovered that they were being blessed with a second child.

She missed Julian’s parents, too, without ever having met them.

She missed them as their daughter, but she also missed them for her own children, who might not even meet _her_ mother.

Anneliese was so grateful to Julian. For letting her know them through him, and for keeping them alive in her heart, as well as his.

_2\. For St. Julian the Hospitaller, patron of travellers, especially musicians._

Julian had been so _shy_ at first. His voice cracked at the slightest hint of nervousness—which was often, as he had been prone to nerves around Erika—and he seemed to hate singing anything that could be construed as a field worker’s song. It was unfortunate, given the fact that his voice was so beautiful. He’d gone flush when she told him so. Had first sputtered out admonishments about making fun of him, then had gone an even brighter red after she assured him that she was being sincere.

His voice was louder, now. More confident. Erika could throw out a tune from their shared childhood and he would pick it up with ease, always to the amazement of Anneliese and Dominick. They were both tentatively familiar with the folksongs of Arborea—Anneliese from living in a castle that employed so many of the kingdom’s poor and Dominick from his lessons in diplomacy as a boy—but neither of them could hold a candle to the songs that Julian and Erika both felt in their bones as they sang them.

There was a beautiful and terrible sort of bond that tethered them together. A red string pulled tight from her sinew and marrow to his. The songs pulled on that string—plucking and thrumming in their flesh as the music moved through the two of them. They had been fashioned from the same earth. Sculpted from the same clay, the same water kneaded in and shaping them. Erika could hear it, when Julian sang, that the same cords had been strung in his throat as in her own.

With ‘higher’ forms of song, all Erika felt was boredom. It didn’t make her elbows hurt or her whole face itch with tears in the same way that her ‘pauper music’ did. Maybe that came from the fact that she had never had time to learn more than pleasantries in the higher languages. Even after she had sat down and learned what all of the words meant in all of the popular operas, she still couldn’t help but remember that none of it was written for her. Or, people _like_ her, at the very least. Not that there were many more than Julian who were like her.

While on her tour, Erika had felt so many wonderful songs that coming back to Dulcinea had been a near torture. Her whole body had felt stiff and immobile for weeks. And then she’d seen Julian again, and they’d been able to share the old songs, and she’d felt that, deep, weeping, raging, bone-rumbling ache. Something unknowably ancient that moved her blood like nothing else.

Sometimes, after they’d made a trip to Arborea, Erika would catch a glimpse of Dominick’s face, and she could tell that he wanted to understand _something_ , at least. _Anything_ at all about the way that she and Julian could sing together and sound as if it was the only thing they’d been doing their whole lives. As if they had spoken to each other only in song for a hundred years.

She couldn’t explain it any better than Julian could.

They were teaching the old songs to Dominick and Anneliese, and with each new tune, the four of them seemed to be more in sync. Dominick was fascinated by just how many songs there were for spinning thread, or for picking wheat, and Anneliese seemed overjoyed to learn more about her husband’s childhood, especially if these were songs he would have sung with his family while they were still with him.

The four of them didn’t sound half bad in harmony, either.

_3\. From the Latin, Lulianus/Julius. Son of Jupiter._

Dominick and Julian had been playing an extended game of cat and mouse, it seemed. Their wives were the best of friends, and Erika seemed to get along well with Julian whenever they visited, so it tended to feel like Dominick was the odd man out when they were left alone together. They were both well-read, so it wasn’t as though they lacked subjects of small talk, but after a while of Erika and Anneliese taking tea in private, or roaming the palace grounds as a pair, it became clear that he and Julian were prone to long moments of silence, where neither of them really knew what to say. Julian often deferred to him in these situations, keeping quiet unless Dominick prompted him to speak. It wasn’t something Dominick relished—being treated like he was better than a man who was easily his equal, regardless of class or caste.

Whenever the situation arose, he would encourage Julian to speak up, but that reinforced the unfortunate precedent of not speaking unless spoken to.

It was better when the girls were around.

Julian seemed more at ease when he was in their presence, especially now that Erika was trying to teach them the songs of her shared youth with the other man. It kept Julian in good spirits, to share what he had been taught as a boy.

And there were dances to go along with them, as well.

As Erika knew the lady’s part, and Julian the man’s, they would split off into pairs to learn the steps. Erika and Anneliese were both marvelous dancers in their respective styles, so Anneliese took to her lessons with the ease and grace that she commanded so easily over most other subjects. Dominick, on the other hand, had only ever been good at dancing in the theoretical sense. He’d never been forced to use what he was taught of court dances, as he’d ascended the throne young, and that muscle memory had long since atrophied into awkward, shuffling steps that lacked any sense of true rhythm if he tried to move without keeping a meticulous verbal count. After this became clear, Julian was single-minded when it came to the task of educating Dominick.

They worked for hours some evenings—because evenings were often the only free time any of them had—with Julian reminding him to keep his spine straight, and his chin aloft without it all coming across as though he was made of stone. He had no idea posture mattered as much in these dances as it had in those he’d learned for court, but it made sense after Julian explained it to him.

Dances like these were all about supporting your partner. If your movements lacked support, there was a chance that, when your partner leaned on you, you would buckle. If you fell while you were trying to lift someone up, well, what does that say about how you’ll act when you’re married? Or when you’re working long, hard hours with a team of labourers. It’s meant to teach constant, mutual support between the dancers. If the leading dancer throws their weight around, their partner needs to be able to lean over and compensate. And if that same leading dancer tries to lift their partner, they both need to be ready for them to come back down to the ground.

It hadn’t been _strange_ , so to speak. Just _new._ To be in such close proximity to Julian. To feel his pulse beating in his hand as the two of them held onto each other. Dominick was catching on quickly, and that meant going through the movements of the dances faster, until it felt like he and Julian were moving as quick as the wind.

Early on, they discovered that the pretty lifted shoes Dominick tended to wear in the palace were no good for the dances they were trying to do. Neither were the tailored shirts, as they were prone to splitting at the seams if he brought his hands over his head. Fine for slow, structured dances, but not so much for the spirited flights Julian tended to take him on. This meant a trip to the cobbler’s was in order, but until then, he’d taken to borrowing boots from Julian. They had already been worn in, and the soft leather was a gift compared to the hard planes of his normal shoes. Loose-fitting shirts were lent to him similarly, and this led Anneliese and Erika to joke about how the two of them were looking so similar, it was hard to tell the two of them apart.

Eventually Dominick got good enough at the dances that they joined the ladies, all four of them dancing together as the old songs pounded out the beat in their chests. They rushed around the empty ballroom in the dead of night, and it felt _arcane_ somehow. Their movements, with the moon and stars as their only witnesses. He would lift Erika or Anneliese just as Julian taught him and he would feel their heartbeats, just as he had felt Julian’s, beating in time with the song.


	3. Anneliese pt. 1

_1\. For Saint Anne, patroness of miners._

As a young boy, Dominick had always gotten uneasy when marriage was brought up. His father would look at his mother—smiling that soft, serene smile he saved especially for her—and would tell Dominick all about how happy he would be when he married. It was never a question of _if_ he would get married, simply a matter of when, and of whom to. His wife would be someone of a similar standing. No common brides for the Prince. He would wed a young lady of noble blood—preferably a princess. To wed any further below his station would be an embarrassment to the crown, the bloodline, and the kingdom, or so he was assured. Not by his parents, mind. His parents read him fairy tales about princes and princesses who lived happily ever after, blissfully in love with one another. No, the king and queen were never the ones to remind him of his station at that age. Bismarck, the consummate professional that he was, had always been the one to keep the job in mind.

It stung, as a child. Being reminded of it. Having to understand that his wedding would be a business transaction at best, and a militarized takeover of another kingdom at worst. As he grew older, his father had grown more pragmatic about the situation, reminding him that taking a wife would solidify their ties to whichever kingdom he chose, and could potentially destroy their relationship with other nations.

Dominick’s issues with the idea of getting married were twofold. First was that it disgusted Dominick that being noble meant treating women like property. The other side of the coin, however, was that he was being forced to choose women at all. When he was _much_ younger, he hadn’t known exactly why couldn’t be married to a prince like him. Girls were _gross,_ at the time, and he’d have much preferred being able to have someone to play with instead of some boring _girl._ He was quickly divested of that notion. His parents, his tutors—anyone who could get him to listen, really—made it very clear he’d be wed to a woman. No ifs, ands, or buts.

It was soon after that that his parents fell ill, and all talk of marriage came to a screeching halt. It would be disgraceful, you see, to have any talk of celebration after not one, but _two,_ of the Dulcinean royal family had perished.

_And from that filthy peasant sickness, no less. It was because they spent so much time fraternizing with common folk, that’s what killed them._

That was the gossip, at least.

He hadn’t even begun to think about seeking a wife until his twenty-second birthday, after his advisors had politely reminded him that remaining without an heir for much longer would reflect badly on his ability to… produce.

Anneliese had been on the fringes of his perception for years. She was only two years younger than him, so she’d attended almost every royal function he could remember. He’d borne witness to her debut at court and, though he had never been close with her, had always thought of her as an intriguing conversationalist. She—even when they were young—had been wholeheartedly invested in the sciences, and in the pursuit of knowledge. The abundance of precious minerals in her kingdom had given her the opportunity to study geology at length, and she took great pride in being able to identify the physical properties of any stone presented to her.

One of her favourite party tricks was identifying the gems and metals in courtiers’ jewelry. She wore a small slate ring on her index finger, and with it she would take rubbings from the bracelets and necklaces worn at court. From its use, the stone surface of the ring glittered with gold, silver, and bronze in equal quarters, with the surface tucked inside her fist left blank for new rubbings. She could tell gold from pyrite on sight, but took to using the slate to show the subtle difference in colour between the two of them when her abilities were called into question.

Being well-read in fiction as well as the physical sciences, Anneliese was also familiar with the vast metaphysical properties of the minerals and delighted in entertaining the lords and ladies of the court by telling them about what wearing certain stones meant. Anneliese had just barely come of age, and so it was seen more as a delightful game than a strange fascination.

At court, Anneliese would be introduced to representatives of their kingdom’s partners in trade. As they discussed the gold coming from Arborea’s mines, the sparkle in Anneliese’s eyes would be unmistakeable.

“What do you know about the gems you are wearing this evening?” she would ask them, words knocking on the back of her teeth. They would never know much. She would always jump at the chance to tell them.

Diamonds are for victory over ones’ enemies. Sapphires for devotion. Pearls and lapis-lazuli for faith in friends and family. Onyx gifted to newly-weds as a totem of happy marriage.

It became fashionable, for a short period of time, to wear constellations of jewels on brooches or necklaces so that Anneliese had a wide field to weave her story from. Acrostics of lapis, opal, vermillion, and emerald became especially popular amongst the younger courtiers, who hoped that wearing such arrangements would draw love to them. Dominick had never been one for especially flashy displays, but even that meant something to Anneliese.

“Gold.” She was looking up at his circlet. There was a wry smile on her face. “Apollo’s most prized mineral. To wear gold is find success in all of your undertakings.”

It wasn’t the first time that they spoke. They’d had perfunctory, impersonal conversations about their parents’ trade dealings, or about the state of crops, or whatever else there was to talk about that wouldn’t cause a scandal. But this. Dominick was her exclusive focus in that moment. Her eyes were looking straight into his own, and he felt a rush of sparks going up the curve of his spine. It surely wasn’t the first time they spoke, but it certainly was the most memorable. It left Dominick with a sudden unfathomable urge to spend more time around her, just to hear the sound of her voice. The way she spoke with such passion about the majesty of simple stones, how she made them into something divine. Dominick was not slow to admit that he was just a touch infatuated, in that moment.

As Anneliese’s game went on, there arose a small problem. She could identify stones with ease and formidable accuracy. In that way, she could also identify the fakes. With the ease of breathing, she could pick out from the crowd which metals had been plated with brass instead of gold, or which gemstones were truly zircon or cut glass.

There was a duke from Amalfi: Duke Marinus. He was a bit of a prick, if Dominick was speaking frankly. The man spent more of his subject’s taxes on wine than anything else, and rarely put any of his own wealth towards maintaining his holdings. Dominick’s father avoided trade with Amalfi because of this.

Among his many sins against his subjects, Duke Marinus was known at court for wearing particularly gaudy and opulent jewelry, and one night asked Anneliese to take a look at one of his new rings.

“A masterwork out of Bremen,” he’d boasted, slipping the ring from his finger.

Anneliese had not been unkind. She’d taken the ring from his hands, waited a moment, and frowned. She’d even taken a second to rub the band against her touchstone to be sure.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, sir, but the stone is glass, and the band is copper,” she said, handing the ring back.

The game ended there. Anneliese had been kept away from court for a few months after that—at first in attendance of rigorous etiquette classes, and then in mourning for her father.

The two of them never grew very close. Queen Genevieve had never seemed inclined to seek a match for her, and even if she had, Dominick wouldn’t have thought himself much of a candidate. When she came back to court, there were rumors that she was being courted by a prince from the far-northern kingdom of Kalmar. Jaakoppi, if Dominick remembered correctly. The two of them were always sequestered to shadowed corners or dancing together in tightly locked embraces. He’d been told off more than once by Jaakoppi’s younger brothers when he made a move to catch Anneliese’s eye.

Jaakoppi disappeared from court shortly after Anneliese turned sixteen. Dominick had ascended the throne around the same time, so his ability to travel to galas and dinners had been severely limited by his duties to Dulcinea. They hadn’t been friends, so it would make no sense for them to write. Dulcinea’s trade dealings with Arborea were far and few between given the distance separating their kingdoms, and even if he had needed anything from Arborea in a diplomatic capacity, he wouldn’t have been contacting Anneliese for it.

He remembered her as an intelligent, intriguing young woman, but not as much more.

Then the letter arrived from Queen Genevieve.

He’d needed to make a decision, and choosing her had been the most fortuitous, even if the circumstances hadn’t been ideal. If he hadn’t chosen her, he never would have met Erika, and Anneliese would have been forced into marrying Preminger, if not watch her mother remarry to the man.

None of it had gone as planned. Even with that in mind, though, Dominick couldn’t help but feel glad. Maybe it was selfish, but he valued Anneliese as a friend and ally much more than he did as an unwilling bride. He was glad that she didn’t resent him for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah the anneliese section got away from me so i thought it might be best to just put up this part separately

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [my heart gives you love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22869472) by [sapphfics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphfics/pseuds/sapphfics)




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